


Exquisite Corpse

by Evandar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Fix-It, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Necrophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-22 06:57:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20870075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: There is no magic that can truly bring back the dead, but Harry can offer Regulus the next best thing.





	Exquisite Corpse

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks, as always, go to R for her work as beta. Any remaining mistakes are my own. Also, credit to Poppy Z. Brite, from whom I am shamelessly stealing the title of this fic.

The cave wall is cold and slick under his hand. The cut on his palm smarts as he drags it down over the dark rock, but he doesn’t flinch – doesn’t hiss with pain or jerk away until the rock shimmers and fades and reveals the dark lake hidden behind it.

Behind him, waves thunder against the cliffs. It’s not as stormy as the night Dumbledore brought him here, but the sea seems to batter this place with a special kind of fury. It’s almost as if the world can sense the wrongness of the magic that still lingers here; Harry wouldn’t be surprised if it could. From what he’s read in the Black library over the years, Dark magic - _truly_ Dark magic – changes the world around it. Here, in the cave, the presence of death is overwhelming – he hadn’t noticed it as much the first time, but now that he holds the elder wand and wears the resurrection stone on his finger, he can practically taste it.

Like calls to like in the magical world, and the heavy weight of Tom’s necromancy makes Harry’s own Hallows-tainted magic sing.

He steps over the threshold without a backward glance. 

…

_He moved into Grimmauld Place after the war only to find that he wasn’t alone there. Ghosts, previously unnoticed, lingered in the corners of rooms: Orion Black paced in his study while Walburga raged in the master bedroom. The shadow of a black dog slipped from room to room, curled up in front of the fire in the evenings, and pricked its ears whenever Harry whispered the name Padfoot. Men and women he knew only from portraits hovered on the edges of his vision, murmuring and sighing, suggesting spells and critiquing his posture._

_The day he woke up without breath in his lungs, with the resurrection stone dark and cold on his finger, the cloak draped over his feet and the elder wand lying across his still chest, he accepted the reality that he _hadn’t_ come back from the station between life and death. Not entirely._

…

There are no traces of the fire. Harry lifts his wand to conjure light, and cannot see scorch marks on any of the cave walls or on the slippery stones beneath his feet. It reflects green and eerie off the still water. Beneath the surface, Harry can sense the inferi. They’re cold and creeping; the lake a mass grave waiting to disgorge at the slightest movement. Somewhere amongst them is Regulus Arcturus Black, traitor to the Dark Lord and fellow horcrux thief. Fellow premature death. Fellow sacrifice.

Of all of Grimmauld Place’s ghosts, Regulus is noticeably absent from the house. Harry has never seen him, whether hale and near-solid as some of his kin have become, or sunken and drowned as he was when he died. The one Black he had most desperately wanted to meet, wanted to _know_, wasn’t there for him to speak to. Instead, Harry got to read his diaries and his unsent letters. Instead, Harry dreamed of him. He dreamed of him drowning, dragged down into dark water. He dreamed of him struggling and gasping for air as hands and teeth tore at him. 

He dreams of him _constantly_. Every night, he dreams of him dying again and again and again.

So, Harry has come to find him. To save him, if he can. Regulus has been dead for twenty-five years, but death has long stopped mattering to Harry.

He finds the boat where he and Dumbledore had abandoned it all those years ago and he sails it out to the island. The pedestal where Regulus placed the false horcrux sits mockingly at its summit – its enchantments gone with Tom’s death. Only the inferi remain, caught in stasis. 

He disembarks, but unlike last time, he remains by the island’s shore. His conjured light flickers and dims, and in the gathering gloom, Harry picks out the shapes of corpses suspended in the brackish water below. They look identical – skeletal and misshapen, clouds of strangling hair floating like seaweed in underwater currents – but they don’t _feel_ that way. Not to him. Not now that the differences between individual souls, individual deaths are a thing he can sense. He slips a hand into his pocket and retrieves the locket.

Kreacher had been reluctant to give it up until Harry had explained _why_ he wanted it. It’s the object most closely linked to Regulus’ death: the thing he died trying to deceive the Dark Lord with. Quite possibly the last thing his magic made while he was alive. It’s still linked to him – just linked enough that Harry can stretch out his new senses and _find him_.

Regulus’ magic is Dark, through inheritance and practice both. It feels like a cool draught across the back of Harry’s neck. It’s a dungeon door closing; a ghost he can’t quite see, standing behind him, just out of reach; a candle snuffed out. 

…

_When he moved into Grimmauld Place, he chose Regulus’ room as his own. He had no desire to share a space with Walburga’s shrieking spectre, and the ghastly posters of Muggle women with their blank eyes and unnatural poses that decorated Sirius’ room didn’t appeal to him in the slightest. Besides, Kreacher had kept Regulus’ room in the best condition. It was clean, tidy, with scattered remnants of the boy who had lived in it._

_His magic lingered in that room, just a little. Harry grew to like it._

…

It’s easy as breathing – as easy as breathing _used_ to be, back when Harry didn’t have to think about it – to bring Regulus to the surface. He’s mercifully close to the island, and when his remains surface, they’re within easy reach for Harry to pull him ashore.

Him. It? There’s a hint of awareness behind clouded eyes as the inferius that had been Sirius’ brother surfaces. Just enough to make his situation horrifying. He’s not dead the way Harry is, preserved forever as a seventeen-year-old martyr; Regulus is a rotten, scabbed thing that reminds him of the train journey in his third year, where he caught a glimpse of a Dementor’s bare hand. The once-proud son of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black is naked and withered, eaten away in places. His hair falls straggling over his face, and when Harry brushes it back with gentle fingers, he reveals bone. What little flesh is left on Regulus’ face is tattered and grey, clinging to the hollows of his cheeks and temples. The rest is greenish bone and exposed teeth: ruined and rotted like the rest of him. Harry can see Regulus’ ribs, exposed vertebrae; he can count missing fingers and toes where delicate phalanges have gone missing, eaten either by the sea or by his fellow inferi.

Regulus makes a soft rattling groan. His body twitches in Harry’s grasp, skull turning and jaws parting in a wary attempt to bite. Apparently, Harry must register as alive enough to count as food, but not _quite_ alive enough for Regulus to be sure about it.

It’s…unfortunate, given the only way Harry knows to restore him.

He could so easily take Regulus’ magic and bend it to his will, turn what’s left of him into a puppet, but that’s not what he wants. It’s the _opposite_ of what he wants. He wants _Regulus_ \- wants to know the brave, clever, cunning boy who discovered Voldemort’s deepest secret and turned it against him. He wants to know the witty, sarcastic person who wrote such entertaining diaries. He wants to know the master that Kreacher still worships, and wants to know who Regulus could have been if he had been given a chance. And while there is no magic that can bring the dead back to life, Harry can offer the next best thing.

He tangles his fingers in Regulus’ hair and, careful of Regulus’ teeth, he cups his face. He keeps his touches gentle, but steady. Firm enough to close Regulus’ jaws long enough to kiss him where the last tatters of his lips are drawn back over his septum.

He’s wet and when Harry draws back and licks his lips, he can taste salt water and decay. Clouded eyes track his movements, and Harry feels a faint draught of magic brush against his own. He leans in again, stealing cold kisses. Slowly, surely, he feels that magic grow more powerful. He feels flesh begin to return, creeping back over bone. He feels movement: regained fingers curling in his robes, tugging gently as chilled lips begin to press back against his own.

When he draws back again, Regulus’ eyes are clouded with something other than death. Suspicion and lust warring behind a perfect, pureblood mask that settles over his fine features. He’s lovely, exquisite. He’s both prettier than the photos of him made him look, and exactly as Harry expected him to be. He’s not breathing. Like Harry, he won’t ever need to. But he won’t rot away again, he won’t decay, and his mind and magic will be his own. He’ll have his chance.

“I – “ Regulus begins, only for his voice to crack. He looks away, down into the dark water filled with the dead. He clears his throat. “What happened?”

“Lord Voldemort is dead,” Harry tells him. “Kreacher missed you, and I… I wanted to meet you, after all the things he said about you.”

Regulus looks back up at him – aware and intelligent and suddenly rather intimidating. “I died,” he says. 

Harry shrugs. “Death is what you make of it, I find. Personally. Um.”

Regulus spares him his descent into incoherency. He leans back in, tugging at Harry’s robes again as he seals their lips together. A willing kiss, this time; still cold, but not stolen. Harry relaxes into it, feels knots in his belly untangle in want and relief.

…

_Grimmauld Place is haunted, though some of the dead are in better condition than others. Ghosts linger in corridors and corners, flickering in and out of sight at will. Some wail, some whisper, some others – Orion – never speak at all. A grim curls up on the hearthrug and huffs contentment whenever its ears are petted. It answers to Padfoot, and to Sirius._

_Regulus smiles when he sees which room Harry chose for himself. It turns wicked as Harry splutters, makes excuses, and he laughs as he drags Harry down – not into a watery grave, but rumpled sheets instead._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please feel free to show your appreciation for the author via kudos/comments below. ♥
> 
> This story is part of HP Creatures Halloween Mini Fest 2019, a currently ongoing anonymous fest. The author will be revealed in early November.


End file.
